


Missing Steps To Lowtown

by AntivanCrafts



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, F/M, Femslash, Gen, M/M, also asexual people are in ur fandoms taking ur gayass significant others, everyone is trans i don't make the rules (except i do), everyone/happiness is my otp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 21:05:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 13,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7590319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/pseuds/AntivanCrafts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>peeks through the revolving door of one universe after another. the only constant is that it ends in love, of any sort</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Merrill relished these long walks on the coast --expeditions, the others called them, but always there was the opportunity to slip away with Isabela and just enjoy the day and her and each other, though she was sure Isabela would have framed it differently, better, or at least have made use of an innuendo in there somewhere-- rare as they were becoming, now that Hawke's surname caused heads to turn, and she took advantage of them where she could. 

Merrill had been dozing, face turned into Isabela's hip while the other woman read. she stirred when Isabela turned a page and tipped her head back to kiss the underside of Isabela's chin, lips curled against the shadowed arch when it bobbed as Isabela swallowed, hard. 

"You know exactly what you do to me," Isabela accused with a laugh in her voice.

Instead of answering, Merrill caught at Isabela jawline with both hands and curled her knuckles in a silent caress that wring out a small, slow shuddering noise that brought Isabela pressing into her hands before retreating. She was flushed, her pretty skin warmed with russet undertones that made Merrill arch up to pursue. 

Isabela met her lips with her own, almost tentative for all that she'd been so eager at first. instead of swiping at Merrill's lips with her tongue she pressed into the kiss, murmuring soundless things that Merrill answered in kind with praises in elvish. Called her beautiful, her evening star in the morning, and even if she didn't understand the individual words, Isabela seemed to understand the gist. 

Her mouth fell open as she struggled for words, and Merrill drank down "you" and "my lovely girl, look at you" and breathed back all the words she wanted to say, they wanted to, that fell in the cracks between them and were lost, save for the glitter of precious things once found, waiting to be discovered anew.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this particular chapter was a request for transfeminine!anders

Anders treasured these quiet moments, long after the lanterns went dark and the sweat had dried, where the only people in all the world were the two of them. No expectations or cares to weigh upon them in the quiet of the early morning, just the soft whisper of sheets over skin as Hawke turned his face into Anders's chest and murmured wordless contentment as Anders carded her fingers through his hair. "You have to get up soon," she smiled, and bit down on a laugh when Hawke made a rude noise.

"I already got up," he said, muffled by her skin and surprised burst of laughter. Even after all this time, he could still make her cheeks feel too hot and too, too tight.

She buried her face into his hair and groaned. "Don't you have that thing with a compte?"

"No." Hawke's hand was trailing high on her thigh, just shy of her cock, and she shuddered out a breathless laugh when he added, "Though I do think I have a meeting with an ambassador."

"Oh?" She let her head fall back against the pillow and whined low in her throat when Hawke's fingers when right past the core of her and down her other thigh, and fisted her hands tight enough in his hair that he groaned when he started to talk.

"Y-yes. You might know her. She's from the Anderfels, and she's just-" He groaned again and lightly bit her, pulling back just far enough afterwards to soothe the reddened spot with a kiss. "Just breathtaking. Talented and gorgeous and far, far out of my league."

"I quite agree," Anders replied, maybe just a bit spitefully, though laughter threaded through every word. "An ambassador? Maybe she'd do better to visit the arishok, I hear they have the most magnificent-" Her next words came out a squeal as Hawke made an indignant noise and rolled them both over, pulling his girlfriend close to scatter kisses everywhere her smile lit up, which left quite a few options.


	3. Chapter 3

"Now I /know/ you're teasing me," Anders said as she blew her hair out of her face with a laugh on the exhale and drew her hands up Fenris's arms, glorying in the shivering sigh that rolled down the other woman's spine, bringing her pressing closer in an attempt to feel every inch of it. "I've been called a lot of things, but beautiful, no."

"Maybe you should have," Fenris said with one of those slow, sweet smiles that Anders longed to catch with her own, and so she did. She could afford to indulge herself, afford to take the time to card her hands through the fall of Fenris's hair, pulling Fenris deeper into the kiss with a gentle tug. Fenris came willingly, eagerly, though only partway. She pulled up short, biting down on her own lip and worrying at it until Anders groaned low in her throat, before giving an answering chuckle and leaning forward to press tiny kisses here and there and there, particularly. "Maybe you should hear such things as often as possible. Every time you laugh," and here Fenris nipped at the corner of Anders's mouth where a dimple threatened to show itself, "every time you gasp," another, lower, tipping Anders's chin up with her nose to bare Anders's throat, where she pressed another, deeper kiss where Anders's pulse leaped beneath lips and teeth and tongue, "every time you are made to sigh out a name." Not /my/ name, Anders noticed, though the thought was hard to grasp when Fenris's free hand had dipped to drag down the length of Anders's chest where she was still exposed from their activities not long before, brushing teasing contact across the still soft head of Ander's cock before lifting to apply sudden pressure where Anders's slim hips tucked in.

"And," Anders murmured out on a hitched breath, straining upward into Fenris's hands, only to give a protesting whine when Fenris pulled back in echo of her movement, putting what she wanted just out of reach, "who exactly is going to do those things? Should I make a list?" She was laughing, but it was tinged with uncertainty. What was this-?

"Anyone's world would brighten at the thought, but. I think we both know who I would like to appear on such a list."

It took an effort to pull her gaze away from the slow curl of Fenris's fingers across her skin. "And who is that?"

"Just the one," Fenris said. Her eyes burned, leaving a scorching trail that made Anders arch up into it, into her, grasping for the warmth hat left her aching for more. "Written a hundred, a thousand times, once for-" It was Fenris's turn to suck in a breath that came out cracked and cracking when Anders smoothed her hand down Fenris's back, settling in a the small of her back to tug her in closer, "every time you made me think on you."

"Oh? And what were you thinking?" Anders seem to have misplaced all of the control she usually had on her muscles. They trembled at every pass of Fenris's fingers, eking out tiny, helpless cries when Fenris's hands finally met her and stayed, soft at first, soft as the lingering kiss Fenris pressed against her chest, then with an increasing pressure that made Anders's hips leap up of their own accord. 

"Of you. Like this. And," Fenris said, or tried to, every word coming out a whispering thing, ones that cut off entirely when Anders's hand wrapped around Fenris, brushing knuckles calloused from staff and knife and writing against those made hard by the sword, made soft by the sound of need, "not. How you look in the sun and the dark. How you make it less. More."

"My dear Fenris," Anders smiled, "are you trying to tell me that I'm beautiful?" Her only answer was a growling thing that made her laugh, right up until it took all of her breath away and gave back everything.


	4. Chapter 4

As much as Anders really did honestly enjoy working at his clinic and get so much out of it, things that helped them get up every morning on days when they wouldn't have thought they could, it was still a special sort of decadence to be able to lie in bed on cold, dark mornings such as this, even --especially-- when they couldn't sleep.

They tucked their keyhole scarf up over their chin and nose, burrowing down into its warmth. Pounce and Dog were curled up all over them, Pounce in between their neck and shoulder with Dog between the spread of their legs, imprisoning them so they could barely turn their head to bring their hand up to bush along Hawke's jaw. "Don't you have work," Hawke mumbled, more of a groan, really, and turned over just as he alarm started to go off. 

"Not today, remember?" They said, laughing as Hawke fumbled for their phone, once, twice, a third time, before finally grabbing hold of it. It would have been easier if Hawke had opened their eyes, but Hawke made it a policy to keep their eyes shut as long as possible in the morning, much to Anders's amusement.

"Fuckinn. Not all of us are morning people," Hawke slurred, rolling over to fling an arm over their face, though not before Anders saw the beginnings of a smile.

"No? You seemed pretty excited to be awake yesterday."

"That," Hawke said with dignity, "was an outlier and should not have been counted."

Anders laughed again and carefully shifted to kiss Hawke's forehead. "Go back to sleep, love. I'll still be here."

"Promise?"

"I promise."


	5. Chapter 5

Carver threw himself down onto his usual bench at the Hanged Man, hissing in disgust when he sat down in a puddle of what he hoped was spilled ale, and dragged a hand down his face. Again. Hawke had leaped to his defense again today when someone had misgendered him. Sure, hurrah. Let's all praise the perfect scion of the Hawke family, the one Leandra unthinkingly called 'man' when she still stumbled over calling Carver her son, or Carver at all, when it had been years, almost half a decade. 

Carver hated that he couldn't hear his older brother sometimes without having that cold twist in his gut at the thought of all of those who weren't like him, or who were. Damningly, frustratingly cis, with all that that implied. Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn't be better if he'd-

"Heavy thoughts, junior?"

Carver let out a laugh on the exhale and tipped an expression that was more a humorless twist of his mouth than a true smile down towards the knot of his hands. "You know I hate that," he told Varric, but it had no heat, sounded more. Resigned. Every time he was called by it it only struck home that Varric would never think of him as a man, he'd only-

Carver barely glanced up when Varric sat beside him, his brows pinched. "Hey," Varric said quietly, and paused, seemingly to collect his thoughts, before he went on, "you're still growing, still figuring out who you are. Some of us still think of you as-"

Carver stiffened, thinking Varric would finish with 'a girl' or any number of similar things he'd endured for years, but instead, to his surprise, Varric went on to say, "a teenage boy, you know? We can all see you want to be part of something bigger than you, but is it so bad to think of you as that lone voice griping at my ear about Hawke?"

Carver stared, dumbfounded, only growing more so when Varric winked at him. "Come now. You know I play fast and loose with words, why wouldn't I do the same with gender?"

Carver's mouth worked, but nothing came out. Spots of color darkened where pale streaks marked his fawn colored skin, embarrassment, and something more. "If you're trying to say something, spit it out already, I don't have time for puzzles."

"Ah, you're right, I apologize for interrupting your busy schedule," Varric smiled, spreading his hands at the empty table. Carver flushed still further, partially hidden behind the arm he still hasn't let fall, and he peeked out at Varric as the dwarf went on, "speaking as someone who spent a very long time becoming what I am now, I thought you'd understand, but maybe not. I-" he paused to look down at the stained tabletop between his hands and then back up at Carver. "I'm not a man either, nor a boy, get that out of your head. I, ah, I just use 'he' because it's easier. Odd as it may seem, people understand a trans man or trans woman better than they do someone asking to be called 'they.'"

"You're saying you-"

"I'm saying that the word 'junior' seemed to me to imply a time of, hah, of transition. I thought you'd appreciate the joke."

Carver's brows drew up, then down, and then he started to laugh, laugh until his sides hurt, and he couldn't have voiced why, save that that cold twist had eased its grip on just enough to allow space for a breath or two, just for now, and he was remembering what it was like to be able to breathe, really breathe, for what felt the first time in years.


	6. Chapter 6

Fenris was waiting for him when he came back from washing his hands of his last patient, drawing himself up to his full, if diminutive height at Anders’s approach. “I have a problem,” he said without preamble and with more than a little reluctance, crossing and recrossing his arms across his chest. 

Anders waited, but no further explanation was forthcoming, so he prompted, “What sort of problem?”

The question seemed to unsettle him. Fenris started to pace, clutching at the empty air at his sides with stiffened fingers curled into claws. “I,” he said slowly, the words seemingly having to be pulled out of him, “have. Difficulty.”

Anders sat, sensing this would take some time, and raised his brows. Fenris snarled wordlessly and resumed his pacing. “When Isabela comes to me, there is. Nothing.”

Anders sat, and Fenris paced. That, it seemed, was that. It would clearly be up to him to do the heavy lifting in this conversation. “Have you considered,” Anders said, as delicately as he could manage, “that it's the woman? It wouldn’t be, ah, unusual for there to be some disconnect in the bedroom, considering her-”

“No.” Fenris cut the air with his hand. “That is not an issue. I have no problem with Isabela’s… activities. My problems are. Of a more personal nature.”

Anders’s brows climbed still higher, earning him another snarl, but where else was his mind to lead itself on this merry chase they were having? “There are salves for that,” he tried, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice despite himself. If it had to happen to anyone…

He supposed he should not have been surprised with the force of Fenris’s glare. “That is not what I came to you for, either.” 

“Well, if not that, then what?”

Fenris ducked his head and twisted it from side to side across his chest. “I /feel/ nothing. I never have, not to my recollection.” 

Anders shook his head with a low laugh, raking his fingers through flyaway hair. It was too late --or too early-- for this. Fenris stiffened, reading his action as refusal, or worse. “I did not come here for you to mock me, mage, but to fix me.”

Anders stared for a moment, looking nothing so much as baffled. “You think you’re-” His expression fell, and he reached out, thinking only to offer… what? Comfort? Fenris drew back at once, leaving Anders reaching for empty air. He stared for a moment before letting his hand fall, sighing. “You aren’t broken,” he said briskly, dropping his gaze away from Fenris to busy himself with bandages he had made earlier in the evening, purely to give himself something to look at other than the elf’s lost expression, figuring that it’d be the more comfortable for them both.

“I would not have phrased it in such a way,” Fenris said after a moment, but the stiff tone he’d wanted sounded more tired than anything else. Resigned. 

“But you do think it.”

“What else am I to think?” There was a hint of a snarl in his voice, a baring of the slight point to elvish incisors, though, again, Anders thought it might more frustration than true defensiveness. He’d been on the other side enough to recognize it when he saw it, but he didn’t think that information would be helpful just now, so he let his hands and his voice fall. “Danarius did this to me, he must have. Fix it, or release me.”

“What you are feeling is completely normal,” Anders said slowly, carefully, lifting his hands to pat the air, “if uncommon. I myself-” He hesitated a moment, wrestling with himself, then added, “have met people like you. It is called asexuality. It happens, Fenris,” he added more gently. “The important thing is that there is nothing to fix, and,” after another, briefer, hesitation, “you aren’t alone.” 

“What does that matter?” Fenris said, frustrated. He was turned away, at the end of his circuit of the room, and did not appear to notice how Anders drew away. “If it cannot be fixed, then tell me how best to- She already thinks that I-”

“I am sure she does not,” Anders told him, far more gently than he would have expected, considering who it was he was speaking to, but the subject was close enough to his heart that he found that he could not help himself. 

“No?” Fenris gave a snort. “You thought so, and you do not even know us. Do you.”

“No. Precisely because she does. She knows you, and she knows herself. But perhaps,” he added, “I am not the one to be having this conversation with. Just. Talk to her. Tell her that you have no desire for… that.” Fenris sank back, his mouth twisting into a crumpled shape than Anders found he could not look directly at. “If she is worth spending your time with, she will understand.”

“/I/ don’t even understand,” Fenris said, but without heat. It was almost plaintive. He sat back on his heels, ears flicking his indecision, and for once Anders was not inclined to mock his silence. The two sat for a moment, then two, before Anders stirred. Fenris stiffened at once, but did not move away when Anders clapped a hand to his shoulder.

“She is more worldly than you seem to be giving her credit for. I am sure,” he said, thinking back to previous firelit conversations, “that she is familiar with the concept. Talk to her. If she is not, come back and see me in the morning,” he added with some bit of his previous humor.”

“If she is not,” Fenris said heavily, “I am sure you shall see more of me in the coming days.”

“Believe me, that is something I think we would all rather avoid,” Anders said, but he was smiling, and so, he saw to his surprise, was Fenris. Maybe this would turn out all right.


	7. Chapter 7

Athenril kicked a long leg over the edge of Merrill's bed and peered around upside-down at Merrill's bedroom, her gaze eventually falling, as most other's did, on the eluvian. Her sharp eyes noted the gold detailing and construction in the flicker of red-gold lashes, falling away only when Merrill crawled back into bed, book in tow. "Going to tell me more about your tattoos, hmm?" Athenril murmured, tracing her fingers up Merrill's arm in meaningless patterns that earned her a laugh and a kiss. 

"Not until you tell me about yours." Merrill's voice was absent, as it often was, but sharpened when Athenril unexpected nodded. Usually she dodged the question or deflected it onto other, far more entertaining matters, but tonight she was feeling generous. 

"It marks an occasion," she said, watching as Merrill traced patterns of her own onto Athenril's arms. These ones weren't so meaningless. 

"Which one?" Merrill prompted, when more wasn't forthcoming, and looked up just in time to see a half-caught expression chase itself across Athenril's face before the other woman rolled over unexpectedly, making Merrill squeak as she was gathered up and pulled atop Athenril's lap, legs on either side of her thin hips. 

"You'll have to guess, sweetheart," Athenril said into her skin as she pulled Merrill down stop her. "Stop guessing, and the game ends."

Athenril kicked a long leg over the edge of Merrill's bed and peered around upside-down at Merrill's bedroom, her gaze eventually falling, as most other's did, on the eluvian. Her sharp eyes noted the gold detailing and construction in the flicker of red-gold lashes, falling away only when Merrill crawled back into bed, book in tow. "Going to tell me more about your tattoos, hmm?" Athenril murmured, tracing her fingers up Merrill's arm in meaningless patterns that earned her a laugh and a kiss. 

"Not until you tell me about yours." Merrill's voice was absent, as it often was, but sharpened when Athenril unexpected nodded. Usually she dodged the question or deflected it onto other, far more entertaining matters, but tonight she was feeling generous. 

"It marks an occasion," she said, watching as Merrill traced patterns of her own onto Athenril's arms. These ones weren't so meaningless. 

"Which one?" Merrill prompted, when more wasn't forthcoming, and looked up just in time to see a half-caught expression chase itself across Athenril's face before the other woman rolled over unexpectedly, making Merrill squeak as she was gathered up and pulled atop Athenril's lap, legs on either side of her thin hips. 

"You'll have to guess, sweetheart," Athenril said into her skin as she pulled Merrill down stop her. "Stop guessing, and the game ends."  
REPLY

Re: Re: femslash minifills  
Anonymous  
June 24 2016, 03:27:40 UTC  
COLLAPSE  
Merrill frowned thoughtfully, almost a pout, and Athenril couldn’t resist leaning up to take that delicious lower lip into her mouth. Neither could she resist smoothing her hands up the tattoos rippling over Merrill’s back like the dappled shadows of waves over rocks, over muscle, groaning in frustration when Merrill worked a hand between them and pushed back. She was breathing hard, her eyes bright. Athenril knew, with a sinking sensation deep in her breast, that she should have seen this coming. Merrill had a puzzle now, and her sometimes lover was like a dog worrying at a bone about puzzles, though if she caught anyone else calling her lover, any elf, an animal, much less a dog, she’d have broken their nose, for a start.

Knowing failure when she saw it, Athenril flopped back on the bed. “What,” she asked the ceiling in a dramatically piteous tone, “what do you want from me, what, what, what?”

“Nothing,” Merrill said mildly, crossing her arms beneath her small breasts as she mulled this over. “That would be cheating, in any case...”

“I meant it to be mysterious,” Athenril groaned louder, reached up to grind the heels of her hands into her eyelids until purple stars bloomed and died. “If it was that easy to guess my secrets, I’d be dead.”

“Perhaps,” Merrill allowed, earning a scoff, but continued, “or perhaps you meant that you marked a time when you surpassed death.”

Athenril peeked out from beneath her hands. “How do you know it wasn’t to mark the first time I got a pretty head of hair between my legs?” She asked, hoping to fluster her, but Athenril should have known better. Merrill barely gave the flicker of an eye to register the comment aside from letting a shoulder rise and fall in a lopsided shrug. 

“You wouldn’t be that easy,” she said, making Athenril roll her eyes, then do a double take, but if Merrill had intended her words to be taken that way, she again made no show of it. “You’d do it to mark something big. A change. A decision. An ending.” She sighed, glancing down for the first time, and seemed surprised to see Athenril’s wide eyes peeking out from between her fingers. “Am I close?”

“You,” Athenril rasped, trying for a laugh, “just wound your way back to the beginning.”

“Oh dear,” Merrill sighed. “Like my twine.” The reference completely passed Athenril by, but who was she to complain if her sometimes lover took to using twine in bed? Shifting pointedly beneath Merrill, Athenril lifted a brow in a move she’d spent long hours practicing before reflective surfaces, and was quite proud of the flush this made work down Merrill’s tawny skin. That was better, and the way Merrill leaned down within the circle of her arms, hands coming up to push Athenril’s hands behind her head, was better still.

“Now,” Merrill said in a calm tone quite removed from what her flushed cheeks and uplifted leg crooked around Athenril’s hip would indicate, “I want an answer, and no teasing this time.”

A hint of a fang peeked out of Athenril’s grin. “You think its that easy to pry my lips apart? Better than you have tried.”

“Maybe,” Merrill smiled back, eyes gone hooded and watchful, “but they don’t have what I have.”

Athenril blinked, which was concession enough, but no more. “And what,” she asked lazily, “is that?”

Athenril drew up a little, blinked. “What?”

“Stories,” Merrill repeated. “I listen when people talk, its my job. The role I was born to play. I record the stories of the people.”

“I thought city elves weren’t ‘your people’,” Athenril said in a tone that had more bite to it than she’d intended, but less than she’d have expected.

“Sometimes even I think so, but. Not tonight. Not now. I listen,” Merrill said again, “and I hear.”

“There are a dozen dozen stories of how I earned my tattoos-” Athenril started, and was hushed by a gentle kiss.

“And all of them are true. And yet none of them are. That’s the secret, or close enough to it.” Athenril was trembling beneath her now, and Merrill quieted. “Oh,” she said softly. “I’ve made you angry. And she was, Athenril realized distantly, and a whole host of other things besides, but chief among them was a strange fear, and as always when that particular annoyance reared its ugly head, she did what she always did to the cause of it: kill it, pay it off, or fuck it. She chose the latter. Easily freed herself with a snap of her wrist and reached up to haul Merrill down by her hair.

Merrill went easily, humming a question against her mouth that Athenril had no intention of answering. Not now, and not ever.


	8. Chapter 8

Isabela wound her fingers through Bethany's damp curls, both sets, as she kissed her way back up her belly, lips curved a smile against her skin when Bethany whined, oversensitive nerves playing still beneath her skin. Isabela peeked up to catch a flushed, bashful smile through Bethany's fingers, lifted to cage a soft laugh between hands that shook. 

"None of that, now," Isabela said gently, lifting her lower hand to tug Bethany's hands away. "I like to see your pretty mouth at all times," she said with a laughing tilt to her chin that might have had more -or less- impact if she hadn't been lying across completely naked across the mage's lower half when she said it, "especially when I'm tempted to kiss them."

"But you're always saying you are all the time," Bethany smiled back, reaching for her, and Isabela went easily, pushing herself up the length of Bethany's body with a long, luxurious roll of her hips that made Bethany gasp and slap playfully at her shoulder. 

"Of course I do," Isabeka said in turn. "Who wouldn't, with a mouth like yours, attached to a face like the one that looks particularly delicious tousled from a night of play, hmm?"

"It's afternoon now," Bethany said plaintively, but she was giggling now, flustered and pleased in just the way Isabela had intended as she wriggled down against Isabela to tuck her face into the space between her neck and shoulder. That Isabela found that shift of skin against skin particularly distracting was just a bonus. 

"I /did/ say delicious, didn't I? And I meant it." Settling back, Isabela made herself comfortable, and entertained, by twining her legs together with Bethany's. It was. Strangely comforting, to be held like this, and by Bethany, of all people. Surely that meant nothing, of course, as it always did, but-

Bethany lifted her head, having noticed her disquiet. "Did I say something wrong?" She asked hesitantly, and Isabela looked up quickly, pushing back a strange pang in her chest to scatter kisses across Bethany's brow. 

"Of course not, sweetness," she told her, and meant it. Bethany had never done anything to make Isabela think anything but highly of her, which was the entire problem. "Not today, not ever." Shit. Shit, shit, shit.


	9. Chapter 9

When it happened, it happened quickly, almost between the space of two heartbeats. Merrill almost missed it. Aveline fell silently, shock of hair fluttering after like the most ironic of victory flags, and by the time Merrill looked over she only caught a glimpse of the silver ribbon of Aveline's sword glittering between those of a group of raiders.

Merrill's heart lurched up into her throat, or perhaps somewhere south of it that was just as important to the process of breathing, because the only thing that seemed to come in or out of her mouth was a thin, ragged scream that was either fear or rage or both. She stumbled into movement, trusting Fenris and Hawke to attract the attention of the bulk of the group as she hurled herself on the lead raider, rock armored hand closing about their face as the workings of poison bomb dripped between her fingers.

She'd already turned before the spell went off, laying about her with to staff to clear a path, and there, just before her, was Aveline. And there was some of Aveline's blood over that was, which probably wasn't that important right now but kept drawing her eye helplessly towards it like a lodestone. Swallowing thickly, she dropped to her knees beside Aveline.

The rock armor click and clinked gently as it disintegrated into rubble beneath impatient scrubs of her hands, leaving her free to- 

do absolutely nothing. 

Merrill's mouth parted around the shape of a word. The air hung heavy with the weight of it, and she swallowed, near strangled. "You're going to be fine," she blurted, because that was what you said in situations like this, even if it wasn't true, though the thought that that might be the case made her jerk her head down to busy herself removing Aveline's chestplate. 

It wasn't too difficult to figure out how it all came together and thus apart, but her hands shook, fumbling in her fear, and the buckles were slippery with blood. And Aveline was no help. She told her as much, as sternly as she could manage, and Aveline chuckled against her hair. Lifted an armored hand to brush through her braids, and Merrill knew then that Aveline definitely had to be going into shock, because Aveline didn't even like braids, she'd said so, much less the head they were attached to. Merrill said that, too, if not the last bit. She was babbling, she knew she was, because Anders wasn't here and she didn't know any healing spells, but it didn't seem to be doing any harm and was doing at least some good to help settle her hands, if not the sharp twist in her belly, so she kept right on doing it. Not that she could have stopped if she'd wanted to.

The breastplate at last came free, and Merrill shoved it aside with less care than Aveline may have liked, but she'd apologize to her later. "Oh," Merrill said when she saw what lay beneath. She'd seen blood before, of course, but it had always been her own, and never quite so much. Then, "This is fine!" She said brightly, almost a chirp, as she started putting together a poultice. Gave a start when Aveline's hand dropped to her hands.

"Breathe, Merrill." Aveline sounded almost amused, which just wasn't very fair at all, and she said so. Said a lot, had, but what had she said?

"Breathing? I'm breathing! You're the one who- oh. Ah. Yes. We're both breathing, and that's- Aveline," she said in a strange, thin voice that seemed to come from a hundred miles away, "maybe you ought to focus on breathing right now instead of making my belly kerflop."

"I'll do my best," Aveline said, and she was smiling in a most frustrating way, and if Merrill felt moved just then to lean in to capture those lips with her own, who was there to say?

Aveline, it turned out, who had remembered just then how very much she seemed to like Merrill's braids, because she'd gripped her up by them and tugged her closer, deepened the kiss by degrees and at angles, and when they at last parted, they were both gasping. "That," Merrill said into the silence, "does not count as breathing, but it was very nice."

"The poultice, Merrill."

"Yes," she said breathlessly, "that's very nice, too."

"I think," Aveline said calmly, if faintly, "it might be nicer on my stomach."

"Oh!" Merrill colored, eyes widening from where they'd fallen half shut as she jerked upright. "Yes! It would be! So, let's see to that, shall we? And then more kissing?"


	10. Chapter 10

Late afternoon light dripped liquid through the high windows of Marian's room at the estate, lingering on bare expanses of thigh and two sets of toes wriggling out of the bottom of the mussed blankets. 

Merrill hummed contentedly when Marian peeled back the blanket the look up at Merrill from between her legs, brows arched. "Did you...? Braid my hair?" She asked, laughter dancing in warm tones. Not mocking, but inviting Merrill to join in.

Merrill pressed her lips together and wriggled delightedly to see the results of work she'd done blind while Marian had been busy beneath the blankets. "I needed something to do with my hands," she said by way of explanation, which seemed to be good enough for Marian, as she laughed and leaned up to kiss her. Merrill tasted herself on Marian's lips, and groaned. Lifted her hands to tug at Marian's hair, and pouted against Marian's mouth when Marian tugged them down against the blankets. 

"If you like keeping your hands busy," She smiled, "I have a few ideas."

"Gathering flowers?" Merrill asked with a smile that had just enough of a smirk in it that Marian blushed, even in the compromising position she was in now, and shook her head. "Are you sure?" Merrill asked in the most innocent tones that did not fool Marian for one minute. "I think I found one!" Leaning forward, quick as a flash, she kissed the joining of Marian's neck and shoulder then, just as quickly, nipped that same spot she had kissed, earning a gasp that made her laugh against Marian's skin. "I found one!" She beamed, eyes crinkling with a laugh when Marian tugged her back up for a kiss, then another, and Marian quite forgot what she'd intended to say, at least for a few minutes, long enough that Merrill put forth a few ideas of her own, and then some.


	11. Chapter 11

It wasn't the first time she'd been caught staring, she was sure, but it /was/ the first time Bethany had caught the curling edge to a smile quirk Mahariel's lips before the warden commander coughed and lifted a scarred hand before her mouth, seemingly focused on the map before her. Or, so Bethany herself would have thought, if the commander's thigh hadn't then pressed against her own.

Bethany hunched her shoulders, barely restraining the urge to duck her head towards her hands with a startled noise that caught in her throat, near throttling her when the commander asked her very casually if she would accompany her to her chambers to go over these documents more closely?

It took three repetitions of the request before Bethany came to her senses, stunned into silence as she had been, and she nearly knocked the bench over as she leaped to her feet, blurting out, "Yes, ser! Ma'am!" She winced at the laughter, after, but Mahariel, she noticed, wasn't laughing, only looking at her with those dark eyes that made her feel like she was falling into a deep well, one that had yet to give her any signs of hitting bottom. 

She followed after Mahariel, two steps at a time to keep up with the other woman's long legged stride. She tried not to peer around at the commander's quarters out of curiosity, but couldn't resist the tug at her heart when she saw a halla statue very similar to the one she had glimpsed in Merrill's house before she swallowed thickly and made to go before she embarrassed herself further. Mahariel caught at Bethany's hip as she turned to go, more a ghost of an impression than true pressure, but it was enough that Bethany pulled up short. Stopped in her tracks and started to turn her head, then halting the motion before it had fully begun. "Do you think," she said carefully, "that its very proper for me to be alone with you in your quarters, commander?"

There was silence a moment and the hand withdrew, making her heart leap up into her throat and thunder with all of her foolishness. She started to open her mouth, formulating an apology, multiple ones, but then there came a rustle of cloth and the warden commander came around before her. This close, Bethany was surprised, as she always was, at how Mahariel had to tilt her head to look up into Bethany's eyes with that same smile again. This time, Bethany caught the flush tinting olive cheeks. "The good thing about being dalish," Mahariel said, lifting her hand to Bethany's cheek, "is that I can play ignorance of any rule I decide is a waste of my time. Or ours," she added, with just a touch of hesitation that made Bethany break out into a relieved smile. So she wasn't the only one who was nervous.

Licking her lips, she shifted to press her cheek just slightly into Mahariel's touch, earning herself a slow, subtle widening of Mahariel's eyes. "I think I wouldn't mind sharing my time with you, so long as..."

She paused, hunting for the words she wanted, and Mahariel withdrew slightly. "So long as what?" She asked, a guarded expression chasing itself across her face that made Bethany jolt and hurriedly continue

"So long as you don't mind sharing it with me."

Mahariel actually looked surprised at that, her mouth parting lack for the briefest of moments, and then she laughed, true warmth tinging her words as she closed the distance between them again to lean up and press a swift kiss to Bethany's cheek, then, glancing up to Bethany's eyes, the corner of her mouth. "Dear girl, its always been yours to take."


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the story's first actual nsfw. here there be dragons.

"What?"

Bethany dropped her burning face into her hands, immediately regretting that last drink or three that had made her open her mouth in the first place, but whatever had prompted her to say it at all made her drop her shoulders on a groan. "I just- I get bored, and give up."

She didn't look up at what she assumed would be a horrified expression, or worse, pity, not until she heard Isabela come around the table to sit by her. "I have always thought it the cruelest sort of injustice," Isabela said in the most gentle tones she had ever heard out of the other woman, "that everyone born with the prodding rod gets a very thorough explanation from their little pals of how go about the sporting events with it, if you like, as I do," she added with a wink, "when the rest of us have to figure it out through trial and error. Its nothing to be ashamed about," she went on, then, after a pause. "Come on up to my room, I'll show you. Be the little pal you've yearned for all these years."

Bethany looked up, her hands dropping to the table as she started to stammer out something inane about how she'd never done that before, making Isabela start. "Wh- oh, no no no," Isabela said quickly, her already flushed face deepening in color as she lifted a hand to scrub through her hair and down to prop up her chin. "No. No sex. Not tonight, anyway. I'm at least four sheets to the wind and your working on the rigging for that last one. It wouldn't be right."

"Oh." Bethany felt disappointed for reasons she thought she was at least that bit too drunk to properly examine, at least until Isabela reached out for her hands. "I'm going to show you how to pleasure yourself right. When I'm done with you, you'll make your toes curl until your whole spine lights up gold," she smiled, and there was truly nothing to say to that that would be at all articulate, so she let herself be led up the rickety stairs that led to Isabela's rented room. It was just as mean as she remembered, but now, drunk and flustered and unable to help staring at Isabela's fingers clasped with hers, it seemed so much more than it had any right to. Or maybe it always should have, if Isabela was there.

Another thought for another time.

She sagged back on the bed, which gave a mighty creak when Isabela sat beside her, leaning against the baseboard with a hand draped between her legs, a sight which Bethany ordinarily wouldn't have given two thoughts to, but which now made her avert her eyes on a small gasp. "First lesson," Isabela said in the most casual, conversational tone that seemed especially out of place in these circumstances and made her shift, not uncomfortably, "you'll notice your breasts. Wouldn't be the first," she said with a crinkle eyed smirk, making Bethany huff out a laugh, "but you /would/ be the first to touch them the way you're going to."

"Touch them? But, what does that have to do with-"

"Trust your pal," Isabela said, then snorted a laugh. "Okay, bad joke. Trust me. I know what makes us with the proper parts quiver, and it is taking hold of those breasts of yours and reminding them that being sensitive isn't a bad thing."

Bethany had no idea how having sensitive breasts could possibly be good in a world filled with scratchy fabrics, but decided to trust in Isabela's experience, and touched a tentative hand to her breast. "Good," Isabela said approvingly. "A lot of people just go about grabbing them, which is fine and good in its proper time, but not just now, I don't think. Now- yes. Squeeze it, just like that. Now, work your thumb- oho, you're a natural."

Bethany was flushed already, her cheeks tingling with the heat of the blood gathering there, but also with that of the warmth pooling in her belly at the first brush of her thumb against her nipple. Isabela wasn't giving her any further instructions, so, biting her lip to steady herself, started to curl tightening circles around it. It was pebbling beneath her fingers, making her blouse fold around it in a shadow that made her mouth dry. Looking up, she saw Isabela watching her avidly, and- "Oh." Isabela was touching her own breast, squeezing it and then folding her fingers over themselves to pinch and twist. Bethany followed suit, making her let out a breathless gasp and twist, bringing up a leg then letting it fall.

"I see lesson one was a success," Isabela said, and Bethany couldn't think to do anything but nod wordlessly in response. "Now, I expect you were just pushing certain rudely shaped things in certain places?" Bethany nodded again, unable to bear even looking at Isabela. "I thought so. Well, this next lesson is one you'll like."

Bethany wasn't sure about that, but obediently pushed her hand down her trousers when Isabela instructed her to, then paused when Isabela did not, as she'd thought she would, tell her to press at where her legs joined, but above it, at what Isabela called "your nub, your bulge, if you will."

"But-" Bethany stumbled, isn't that where you...?"

"Think that's where you piss, don't you. Don't worry, I did, too," Isabela told her, laughter threading warm through her words. "A lot of us do. But you don't. That right there is your clit. Love it, and it'll love you right back."

Bethany had no small amounts of doubt about this, but, reassured that it wasn't what she had thought it was, touched experimental fingers there. Immediately, there was a tingling rush that made her start and Isabela lean in closer. "Again," she said. "Two fingers, now, and flick them from side to side, quick, just- yes, just like that," she said as Bethany shuddered out a questioning noise, bent almost in half around the warmth between her fingers as she sped up. Isabela's lips parted, giving way to a soft noise that made Bethany squeeze her legs tight around her hands. Isabela laughed. Not mockingly, but warm and lingering in the pass of Isabela's hand over her cheek before it settled in the space between them, gripping at the blanket. "Ah ah ah," Isabela chided with a none too breathless smile. "None of that. Spread them wide like the dawning, sweets. Let's see you shine."

Bethany swallowed roughly and forced down a noise of her own as she let her legs drift apart again to admit her hand again. Her head fell back against the pillow almost at once, a ragged, then noise tearing itself out of her mouth as her hips rose up to meet her own touch.

On the other side of the bed, she felt the mattress dip and a creak, and then another. Between them, the old bed sounded like- Bethany let out a giggle that went high when Isabela told her to press two fingers inside of herself and how to curl them, and as she did she arched up off the bed until her back bowed, shivers racing down her spine that left everything feeling too sharp and not sharp enough, all at once. "Bela?" She tried, then cried out when Isabela told her to touch her clit again, wanting more and more of something she wasn't getting. Let out a whine that wrung out wavering moan from the other side of the bed.

Looking up, she saw Isabela had pushed her smalls aside and was working her fingers in and out of herself while she squeezed her breasts with her other hand, shifting between one and the other. "Don't stop," Isabela told her in a voice that was just this side of begging, and she didn't couldn't, not when it felt so good and not Isabela asked her to.

That coil of warmth in her belly was spreading electric up her spine, and she could feel herself approaching the crest of something, something that made her twitch restlessly, made her gasp and groan and twist on the bed, and every second she watched Isabela touch herself made it approach all the faster. One more press of her fingers against herself, one more pass of Isabela's hand down her own folds, and Bethany was bucking up off the bed, spine bowing rigid as shocks rippled up her spine. The whole world fell away, whiting out at the edges, and it was a long time before anything else intruded again.

When it did, she gradually became aware that it was Isabela's hand smoothing over her hair. "Much better than a vegetable all on its own, isn't it, hmm?" Bethany laughed agreement, sprawled limp and boneless and shivering, and gave a hum, then shifted to look at the underside of Isabela's chin.

"What happens now?"

"We could always cuddle," Isabela said, waggling her eyebrows until Bethany laughed, but Isabela had already lifted an arm, and Bethany went readily, tucking herself up against Isabela's side. Her hand was still wet, but Isabela didn't seem to mind one bit as she linked their fingers together and lifted them to her lips. "Now sleep," Isabela ordered. "I may be a bad influence, but I'm a mindful one."

"Who said I minded bad?" Bethany asked, but Isabela had already fallen asleep, or was at least pretending to, and if it was bad to want good things for the people you cared for, then Bethany was awful.


	13. Chapter 13

There weren't many days where they had the opportunity to while away an evening enjoying each other's company, and Fenris intended to take full advantage of it. 

Had, in fact. The day had slipped by almost without his noticing. When next he looked up the early summer twilight was slowly giving way to night, and trickles of warm golden light crept still through the holes in the rood over top of the blanket nest Fenris had set up in the master bedroom. Carver stretched beside him with a groan and pulled at the blankets. Fenris had unbound his breasts for the evening, and hummed when the blanket dragged against them, tugging him further into the circle of Carver's arms. He went willingly, tucking himself up against Carver's side with a sigh. "One would think," he said in a voice heavy with something he dared not give voice to, "that a day and more of freedom would be rest enough."

"Maybe," Carver said without opening his eyes, though his lips curved in a slow, spreading smile, "if someone hadn't decided that that freedom was best used to hunt down slavers all day, I wouldn't have needed a nap. Or three."

"Is this where I tell you you're getting old?" Fenris asked in a faux solemn tone, earning him a laugh and a lazy swat with a pillow.

"Only if you don't mind hearing that you're ageing me," Carver said from the other side of the pillow, and when Fenris pulled it away, he was met with a pair of warm lips. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."


	14. Chapter 14

Carver held a twist of greying hair up before his eyes a let out a grumbling sigh. "This," he said aloud, "is as old as I've ever been."

"That would sound very impressive if you weren't younger than me, Carv," Varric said as he slid in beside Carver in the chair, half perching on the armrest and half stretched out around Carver's belly. "What am I supposed to do with something who thinks their twentieth grey hair means they're old? I was going grey before you even stepped off the boat."

"It," Carver sniffed as he circled his arms around Varric and tugged him more firmly into his lap, "is hardly my fault you're a worrywart." 

"Me?"

"You." Carver bent his head to tail kisses up Varric's temple into his hair, which was, yes, a lot lighter than it used to be, and if the new position made his back creak, it was worth it just to hear Varric sigh, feel him relax as he released the tensions of the day. "The worst."

"If I worry, its only because you're worth it," Varric said, not quite looking at him and instead down at where their free hands had linked over Carver's softness and Varric's sharp angles, and let out a soft sound when Carver responded with a kiss, a touch to his cheek, his heart, everywhere he could that would remind Varric that it was in no way unrequited, had ever been.


	15. Chapter 15

“Three years.” Marian’s voice was approaching a whine, sulky and frustrating and muffled into his shoulder, cheeks pressed up into her mouth until it was bent out of shape. Lips twisted into an expression that, from this angle, looked less like the proud and storied tilted smirk she’d bestowed on any and all comers than, to put it bluntly, a pout. Or a duck. His fingers drummed idly on his knee, already thinking about where this would best fit into his narrative. “Maybe I’m losing my touch. My womanly wiles. Say, Varric,” she said, peering up at him from beneath her lashes, “maybe I’m being too subtle. Do you think he’d take it badly if I lifted his skirts and ravished him here and now? I mean to say,” she said, eying the way Anders’ throat bobbed as he laughed, “is there room for misinterpretation there?”

“You don’t want me to answer that, Hawke.” But he already was, and he suspected Isabela was, too. Judging by the delighted gasping grin, she already halfway through penning the latest of her friendfictions in her head, including the bits where Anders took her and she took him and they gave of each other, prayers whispered against sweat-soaked skin and in the spaces between breaths, between heartbeats. In those moments where the world narrowed down to the person in their arms and nothing mattered but that burning ache that roared in their chests, their ears, their hands that grasped and mouths that bit and parted and pressed kisses to heated skin, pushing them apart and pulling them together all at once, until they lost all sense where one ended and the other began.

“But if you did?”

“If I did?” He drawled, tilting his head to follow her line of sight to a twist of gold, pale skin winking in the lantern light, and he saw what Marian did not, that no matter where Anders was in the room, he always managed to be turned to face the woman currently wearing a hole in his coat pocket. Varric slapped her hand away, and the one sneaking towards his ale. “I’d probably take it upon myself to ask you your intentions.” Liar. He already knew them, better than self. Her intentions had been clear from the moment she’d set foot in Anders’s clinic. From the moment she’d looked at him she’d been lost. As lost in him as Varric in her, in her every unnoticed gesture and word, because the woman he saw, the woman he invented, needed no one so much as they needed her.

There was no wrong way to take it, he could have said, because Anders had already taken it every possible way. Because he was as lost as she was, and there was no saving them now. But he couldn’t say that, so instead he smiled and patted Hawke’s shoulder and spouted off a line that made her laugh and turn to look up at him and call him a liar.


	16. Chapter 16

Fenris measures time not in years, or in days, but in breaths. In their lack. In the moments that take them away. Replacing them but slowly. 

The air has never felt so heavy nor so still as it does now, and he has to struggle to draw it in, has to remember to breathe. Remember to part his lips. Pull in the sound of her laugh and push out a word, a name, a hasty, thoughtless thing. A dangerous thing. In. And. Out. Heaving like he’d been running, been fighting, been flitting about as a ghost made of skin and made of light, smeared thickly across the air until it bled. It felt like he had. Like Marian had caught time itself in between her slender fingers, in his, in the scrape of a clawed finger against the curve of her leg, just where the scars end and the flesh begins, and had given it a twist. Sped it up, slowed it down. Caught.  
Just as he was caught.

Her thumbs pressed on either side of his spine, laced a chain he didn’t know how to break. Wasn’t sure he even wanted to. Not anymore. As fragile, a tenuous a hold as a word, a smear of teeth against the dark, and yet.

She stands before him in her smallclothes, down to her breastband, a strip of fabric the color of sunsets off Seheron cookfires, thin and straining and liable to rip and snag on his his armor, and yet. She has stripped the layers from him, one by each, until this was all that was left, this moment of pause, the gasp before the indrawn breath.


	17. Chapter 17

Marian hadn’t meant to fall asleep, any more than she’d meant to fall in love. It happened slowly, and all at once, a gradual lossening of her grasp on the stack of paperwork, busy work, whatever work she’d been able to find for herself that would keep her occupied, keep her distracted, keep her from looking up from her writing desk to an empty room in an empty house. Filled with treasures and trinkets, physical traces from the passing of the dead.

Statues and books and and wines and wisps of ribbon left, still, on her bedside table. It had been their routine every day, every morning, since Marian’s hands had been big enough, sure enough, to wind the splash of colored fabric in amongst her mother’s hair. Before that, she’d sat warm within the close of Leandra’s arms and hummed, sang, winding the high crack of her voice with Leandra’s. The song hadn’t mattered. Sometimes it was a silly thing, or a dirty thing, and sometimes it was a strange song, a lilting song brought to her over the oceans and the years to this moment, stretched between them with a length of ribbon. They had sat heavy in her chest, those songs, and she’d found herself humming along to one of them the day she’d turned to see that ribbon, mouth parting to open around the first words, and had sat down again, hard. Ordered Bodahn to take it away, to box it up in a room that had itself been boxed away, locked as tight as a secret never told. Given explicit orders that she knew he would disobey. Would curl the ribbon with careful hands around the gown Leandra had had lain out on the edge of her bed for the next day, all silk and lace and curling purple blossoms she’d had clipped from the tree outside her window.

She hadn’t meant to, and wasn’t that a phrase already grown tired and worn on her tongue? Well-worn as the condolences, the letters and the pats and the offers of assistance from men and women she barely knew, that they had no intentions of living up to?

She hadn’t meant to. Had only meant to rest her aching eyes for a moment, grateful for the exhaustion that painted the back of her eyes as black, as a soft, pinkened thing that bore only the shape of themselves.

She could have sworn she’d closed them only for a moment, the space of two breaths, but when she opened them again it was to nothing. To blackness, a vast, limitless expanse of black that rose up to join an empty sky. It was not featureless, however. There, growing, was a knot. Dark on dark. Ink spilled on dark paper, on water, blossoming to swirls of color, of texture, of light, a pulse, a gradual clench and release that grew and stretched before until it was everything, until she was nothing and she was caught, helpless to do anything but stare.  
At the grass. At the cottage, with its fresh coat of pain and crooked shutters. At the garden, with the rabbit warren in the southeast corner. At the warm golden glow that came from nowhere and went everywhere, alighting on grey hair gone silver, winking in the light, in metal and furs and in the ruddy gleam of apples she’d tripped and knocked over in her haste to catch bugs, cicadas and grasshoppers and little brothers.

She remembered this day, so clearly. This was the day Carver had come running up, chest puffed out with pride, clutching the tiniest fish between the chubbiest fingers, stumbling and splashing muddy water all over Bethany’s skirts. This was the day Bethany had shrieked and laughed and ran to hide behind the arch of Malcolm’s shoulders, stirring up a mass of dreamstuff like snow, like a shoal of dust, rising up to hang, frozen, glittering before the light of her smile.

Everything was silent, hushed, but this scene had played itself out on her eyelids at night long enough, often enough that she was mouthing along with them, trying to force them to come alive just this once, just for now. Willing it to happen, needing it to, but it didn’t.

Malcolm’s throat bobbed around a laugh just on the edge of hearing. The air shivered with it, reverberated, just on the edge of cracking. But it never did. Her heart clutched and seized in her chest, making her next breath come as a gasp, an intake of air that wasn’t, that did nothing to still the restless, shaking, overwhelming need to hear him, to touch him. She took a stumbling step forward and nearly fell, swept up a trail of silent giggles that swept her up and around and pitched her down on shaking legs.

Bethany and Carver darted in and out of the encroaching darkness like the silver gleaming thing between Carver’s hands, little gleaming snatches of teeth and hair and muddy, skinned knees, and she was breathless. It was all caught up in her throat, her mouth, waiting to come out as a sob or a cry but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, because she knew that if she made the slightest sound it would break this moment, this spell, and they would be gone, swept away like so much dust, and she just couldn’t. She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t stop staring at them, watching her siblings at play, and it occurred to her that she’d never really looked at them, like this. Like they had been, every day or their lives. She’d missed it. They had been such a constant, these two, such a sure thing in a life on uncertainties and change, always following after her, always pulling at her sleeves and laughing and arguing and annoying her to the absolute limits of what she could bear, until the day they didn’t. Until the day came that Carver wasn’t there, that he started to withdraw in on himself and his growing envy and fears, the day he had come home from the chantry one day parroting something, some snatch of a sermon that turned Bethany’s face in a mask, a rictus grin that never went away, not really, for days, weeks, years, until the day her smile had grown to kiss a landscape.

She’d looked away for a moment and when she looked back these two children were gone, all that light that had gathered in the shadows of shared dimples had gone away, while remaining exactly where they were, and she stared, transfixed, until something else caught her attention. There was movement, at the corner of her vision, tearing her away from the twins at last. It was Leandra. There was flour dusting her hair prematurely white and grooves in her pruny fingers and she was so, so beautiful that it hurt to look at her. To breathe. This was her mother as she hadn’t been in years. In forever. She looked so young. They all did, but-

Wrinkles had already begun to gather and settle in the soft places in her careworn face, the warm places, but her feet stepped so lightly over the grass. Easily. There was a smile tucked into the corners of her mouth that dipped low, pulling Malcolm’s eyes with it as she bent, pressed it to his, where their lips met, curved to fit. She was smiling against him, still, cheeks pressed around his nose and his beard and his breath, and it wouldn’t last, couldn’t.

Marian was shaking, looking between the two of them, the four of them, at him. Her hands were too small. Stumbled through the workings of magics she’d cast a hundred times, a thousand times before, could have cast in her sleep. Had. Because she was only a little girl and didn’t know them yet, wouldn’t learn them until after this day, because of this day.

Green light flickered and died between the desperate clutch of her fingers, slipping away like so much sand. Just like it had before. Just like it always did, every time. And every time Malcolm bent to her, as he was now, pressing the round of his nose against hers with a laugh she could feel but not hear. It ruffled her hair. The girl Marian had caught at it and laughed. The woman Marian was now caught at him, at them, but he slipped away like the magic had, faster, already turning away to say something unseen to Leandra.

Her mother touched her lips with the tips of her fingers, the bow of her mouth fluttering under her laugh, her pinkened cheeks, and she didn’t look at Marian, not once, even when Marian ran to her, was shouting, because the Marian in life hadn’t done either of those things. She’d gotten distracted by a frog and had run off to catch it, to dump it down the back of Bethany’s dress, and so she’d missed this moment.

She hadn’t seen it, heard it. Hadn’t been paying attention to this one, last private moment between them. One last moment where the sun had shone down on them, all of their hard-won freedoms and sacrifices culminating in this smile, this hand cupped to Leandra’s cheek. Her lips pressed a promise between those split palms, and there was nothing hidden in that curve, nothing held back or missing or lost.

In a moment, Malcolm would cough, would clutch at his chest, the lines of his face crumpling in on themselves in a sudden, shocked pain. Before he remembered himself. Before he laughed it off, before he swung Leandra up onto his shoulders and paraded her before his clapping children. Before he died.  
Marian only slowly became aware of the clutch of fingers at her mouth. They were so pale, so bloodless in their grip, that they didn’t even feel like hers. But they were. It was her fingers, her mouth, her staring eyes fixed on the same four people that would never see her, never stop laughing. Never stop dying.  
Caught as she was, it was a moment before she noticed the silver moon cast to Malcolm’s eyes, the heavy swishing pass of a presence disturbing the air between them, as of the giants that had passed beneath their boat on the way from Gwaren. A smoky laugh trailing liquid over her skin. A demon. Always before, they’d offered her power or money or tempting, teasing glances at a better life, a life where she didn’t have to be alone, to worry, but not this. Never this.

“Marian.”

Always before, she’d been able to resist.

“Marian, let’s go home.”

Always before, she’d had so much to lose, with so little to gain. 

Marian lifted up her hands, and the darkness howled in the back of her mind.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was actually the very first piece of writing i did for the fandom, way back in 2013 or so. time flies

Think of the way Zevran’s fingers might have curled over the earring when it was refused. Steady. They didn’t shake. He didn’t have to force himself steady, bearing down on those traitorous fingers in a rush of pain fueled anger that swept away everything before it, leaving him feeling empty, tired and alone in a way he’d started to think he wouldn’t ever be again.

That didn’t happen, because any such tremors, such weakness, had been forced out of those hands far too long ago for it to be there now.

A great many of Zevran’s words and smiles and reactions to the warden had, at first, been. Not false, entirely, but a show. A face, one of many he’d carefully cultivated over his lifetime to be inoffensive. Charming. Seductive, if need be, and time allowed.

Those faces, those shields, had gradually fallen before the warden, but he almost wished them back now. Slow poison as they had turned out to be, leaving him dry and brittle, likely to snap, they had grown familiar, comfortable. Now they were gone, he didn’t know what to do.  
He simply wasn’t prepared for this. For only the second time in life he’d allowed himself to be swept up in the heady thrill of him and her and them, and for the second time in his life he turned on his heel and walked away.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ace bethany in the circle

"I- no. Thank you, but. No."

 

The other mage drew back, clearly offended, if not hurt, and drew her arms across her chest, brows closing down in echo, and Bethany had to clench her hands to stop herself from the reflexive urge to fix, to help as much as she could, because there was no fixing this, not without breaking herself even more than she already was. "Why not?" The other mage, Ashar, asked. "This is the closest we get to something real, something we can hold. Why would you deny yourself that?"

Bethany's lips peeled back at the corners in a rough approximation of a smile. "I just-" The answer danced on the tip of her tongue, half a word from telling Ashar that the idea of someone touching her in such places, of being touched back, made her feel a rush of cold all over. Not disgust, but discomfort, a boil of anxiety in her blood that made her almost take a step back, except that Ashar hadn't done anything, no one had, except for her.

"I'm not ready," she said instead, a weak answer that she knew would spell trouble down the line, but she couldn't bear to let Ashar down hard, not when there was so much else to pain her in this place. "I need time." And a lot of it. She didn't think there would ever be enough.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ace hawke/ace varric fluff, for the kinkmeme

Varric flicked the feathered end of his quill back and forth across his lips as he hummed thoughtfully, his other hand resting on Hawke's shoulder where he had curled up across his lap, his legs dangling off the arm of the stone chair, stockinged feet nearly brushing the ground every time they swung. "You're going to disrupt the artistic process, Hawke," Varric said, his voice rumbling where Hawke had his ear pressed against Varric's chest. "Its very delicate, you know. Needs to be nurtured, like a garden."

Hawke huffed a laugh and turned his face into Varric's shirt, breathing in the warm, soothing smell of leather and soap from his morning routine, just an hour past. Hawke was still in his eveningwear, as he usually was at this time of the day, but was slowly coming awake to the scratch of pen set to paper and the cadence of Varric's rough voice as he talked to himself, tasting the words to see if they stuck between his teeth. 

Today, it seemed they did, and Varric shook his head, the angles of his stubbled chin just brushing Hawke's hair. "Now look what you've done, I'll have to start over."

"If that means I get to spend another hour right here, I'm more than happy," Hawke smiled, pressing a kiss to Varric's collarbone, earning another set to the crown of his head. 

"No more than I, my heart. No more than I."


	21. Chapter 21

Aveline ground the bump of a knuckle into her mouth as she rounded the corner of the rug in her quarters, turning with the swift economy of motion that came from patrolling the same streets night after night after night. The cramped confines of this room were not as well suited to pacing as that of her office, but emerging from her room would inevitably signal to late returning officers that she was ready to receive guests, which she decidedly was /not/.

Not tonight.

Another turn. Her knuckle bit into her lower lip, grounding her in the present moment. She had to think. She tried to tell herself that surely this wasn't as difficult as asking to court him had been, Maker, but it /was/, so much more so. She quailed at the very idea of his responding with any of the cruel words she had become used to over the years whenever she told anyone about her gender, including from those she had thought friends.

But not Wesley. Never Wesley.

The corners of her mouth twisted. Another turn. This had to be done, before-

She didn't jump when there came a knock on the door behind her, but only just. Her teeth ground into the flesh of her thumb for a moment before she released it. “The door is open,” she said, and was pleased that her voice was steady. Steady, that was, until she saw that it was officer Donnic who stood on the other side of the door. 

Aveline’s mouth twitched at the corners as an unreadable expression settled across her face, one that made Donnic, already visibly uncertain, draw back a bit. “Yes?” Aveline prompted after several long seconds of silence passed, then, “Is something troubling you, Donnic? Was it my proposal? Because you can-” 

“Ah! No no no!” Donnic patted the air with a breathless smile. “It's nothing like that! Nothing bad. Nothing, leastwise, unless you decide it is.” 

That did not sound promising. “What, exactly,” she said slowly, “am I supposed to find unpleasant? If you are referring to your gift last night, I can assure you that I-”

“Aveline,” Donnic blurted, “I know. I know, and it's- it's alright, I swear it is, at least- well.”

Aveline would only stare. Donnic seemed to take it well, fortunately, because he laughed and reached up to scrub a hand against the back of his neck with a laugh. A few moments earlier, that laugh would have weighed heavy in the air between them, but now it made her smile in fits and starts, as did he. "Yes," he said all in a rush. "I know. I've been waiting for the right time to tell you, but it never felt- well. What exactly is the right time to tell someone that you don't have the parts they were expecting, let alone the woman you are courting?"

Aveline started to respond, to blurt out words from the prepared script in her head about how she would understand if he no longer wished to court and be courted by her, then slowly stalled as the words settled in. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. “Donnic, you-?”

He looked up at her from under the fringe of his hair, released the lip she only just now realized he’d been worrying between his teeth in a tremulous smile. “I came to tell you tonight, because I put it together. Once you've grown up with it all your life, you get pretty good at recognizing the signs.”

Aveline huffed out a laugh that was more exhale than true sound and turned her face into Donnic's palm. She pressed a kiss there that lingered, before easing out a shaking breath that seemed to drain all of her strength along with it. She sagged, her shoulders rolling forward to hunch against him. His hand was her lifeline. He was. And she'd been expecting to fall, but that contact was enough, he was enough, he had always been enough.

She didn't realize she had spoken aloud until she felt his other hand come up to smooth across her cheek. “A fine pair we make,” she said, or maybe he had. In the moment, they had all of one voice, and it was a small thing, but gaining traction with every tentative brush of finger against finger against smiles.


	22. Chapter 22

"A bit more hip, I dare say," Zevran said as Isabela wobbled her way across their rented room on delicate Orlesian heels. He didn't even try to smother his chuckle when Isabela tried to cock out her hip on the next step and nearly went sprawling.

She bit out a sharp sound between her teeth. "Is all this pageantry truly necessary?" She asked plaintively. "Real women don't have to-"

"Ah, my dear," Zevran said, getting to his feet to take up Isabela's hands, "those are someone else's words, not yours. You are very much a real woman, as much as I am a real man, at least at the moment. The only difference is that you have to unlearn a lifetime's worth of lessons in being raised in the wrong sort of shoes, hmm? Now," he said, stepping back to hold her hands outstretched until only their fingertips touched, "show me your camouflage and plumage both. Walk for me."

"These aren't the right shoes, either," she grumbled, but took an unsteady step forward. As she walked, her natural grace showed through in the set of her jaw and the fall of her hair over bare shoulders when she laughed. "Get me some proper boots, and I think we talk more about walking, and the hips, too," she purred.

Zevran's eyes crinkled when he laughed. "As my lady desires," he said, bowing low, and when he rose up it was to see Isabela peeling off her shoes to try on the corset he had bought her. It took a bit of wriggling and fluffing, but when they were done, Zevran lifted his hands away from the ribbons and turned to step away from the mirror, letting Iabela see herself for the first time.

"Oh," was all she said, all she /could/ say. She moved towards the mirror, unsteady for an altogether different reason, and touched the glass. "Seems a stranger found her way into your room, sweets," she breathed, trying and failing to reach for a laugh.

"If she has," he replied in the same tones, "I would like to get to know her, and I suspect you would, as well. Let us discover her together."


End file.
